History of KAT Artists’ Open Studios

Kauai’s first, island wide open studio tour happened in 2015 with 39 artists participating from Waimea all the way to Hanalei over the course of 2 weekends. A Preview Exhibit with examples of each artist’s work was held the entire month of April at the Kauai Society of Artists Gallery in Lihue, Hawaii.

The very first year was a huge success with over 1700 individual studio visits and more than $36,000 in direct art sales over the course of 4 days! Our goal is to expand next year’s event to include even more artists and artisans around Kauai and entice art lovers (and open studio event lovers) to Kauai during our event.

If you are an art lover here on Kauai or elsewhere, and would like to know when next year’s event will be to be sure you are on island for it, please join our mailing list to the right.

If you are an artist or artisan on Kauai and would like to know when Registration opens for next year’s event, please join our other mailing list at bottom, right.

The founder & producer of the Kauai Art Tour – Donia Lilly – has been participating in & facilitating Open Studio Tour events since her seeing first Tour in 2000 in Santa Cruz, California. Later, she was a part of the Monterey County Open Studios, & a guided Art Tour in Reno, Nevada after that.

When she moved to Kauai in 2011 and saw there was nothing like it here, she launched a smaller Open Studio Tour for the Women Artists of Kauai and produced/marketed that event in 2012 and 2013, as well as organizing a coordinating Preview Exhibit for the Tour at the Kauai Museum in 2013.

Throughout 2014 Donia worked towards securing funding to launch an island-wide art event that everyone could participate in, regardless of medium or gender, and was awarded a grant from the Hawaii Tourism Authority to help move forward with the 2015 Inaugural Kauai Art Tour ~ Artists Open Studios.

Not on Kauai but still want a copy of the printed Guidebook? Have one shipped to you anywhere in the US for only $5